Well, I'm witnessing from the Prime Minister down a situation where you're focusing on a particular situation, but there's a broader problem, and that's with the gagging of parliamentary officers. You're saying these officers, like the Information Commissioner, shouldn't have certain review powers and shouldn't disclose certain information. I'm saying that they need the order power. They need the right to inspect more records. They shouldn't be shut out because it's a cabinet confidence. They shouldn't be shut out just because it may be a journalist's source. I think those would be protected. I don't think anybody disagrees with that.
If you look at the way every other section in this act is crafted--and I didn't want to go there, but I will--if you look at the exclusion of the CBC both under the act.... And by the way, it's different under the Privacy Act. Isn't that interesting? It's very broad. It doesn't talk just about journalists' sources. It also talks about this terrible thing that's introduced in this bill, that everything that is not general administration should be excluded.
We've been talking about the coverage of crown corporations, whether or not they should be covered and how broadly, and whether the Prime Minister should be covered or not, but then we've forgotten about the base of what it's all about--records. We've put in an ill-conceived definition of “record” that is about documents and is a much more limited one. We're willing to limit machine-readable records. We're willing to exclude whole categories of records unless they're general administration, including the CBC.
Somebody here has it backwards, and that's wrong. That is reversing 25 years of experience that has accumulated. You don't change the definition of “record”. You don't say in this electronic age that certain machine records aren't released. You don't just say general administration is the easy way out and the rest is excluded. That's wrong.